Empathy ─ From Bench to Bedside

There are many reasons for scholars to investigate empathy. Empathy plays a crucialrole in human social interaction at all stages of life; it is thought to help motivate positivesocial behavior, inhibit aggression, and provide the affective and motivational bases for moraldevelopment; it is a necessary component of psychotherapy and patient-physician interactions. Thisvolume covers a wide range of topics in empathy theory, research, and applications, helping tointegrate perspectives as varied as anthropology and neuroscience. The contributors discuss theevolution of empathy within the mammalian brain and the development of empathy in infants andchildren; the relationships among empathy, social behavior, compassion, and altruism; the neuralunderpinnings of empathy; cognitive versus emotional empathy in clinical practice; and the cost ofempathy. Taken together, the contributions significantly broaden the interdisciplinary scope ofempathy studies, reporting on current knowledge of the evolutionary, social, developmental,cognitive, and neurobiological aspects of empathy and linking this capacity to human communication,including in clinical practice and medical education.

Jean Decety is the Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. He is the coeditor of The Social Neuroscience of Empathy (MIT Press, 2007).